Memories of the 28th Century

A few hours ago I read a disturbing discussion on an online forum. It was about whether it was acceptable to ignore sexism in writing a work of fiction. Most of the replies seemed to assume that sexism as a cultural form was a large part of the life of all women. Not being a woman, I can’t speak to all of that, but the concept of sexism that was being discussed seemed to be related to the different sex roles of men and women, and those roles are imposed by DNA and nature, not by culture.

Is it sexist that women bear children? I got the impressions that some people think so, as if men deliberately designed the sexes so that females would do the important things and men could play around. The story that was being discussed was set in a Medievalish setting in a secondary world. That got me to thinking about the history of the roles of women in society. Due to childbearing and related nurturing women stayed near home, while men sometimes roved far afield or went a viking or otherwise had a merry time.

There were women who engaged in masculine activities, but they were few and usually toward the end of childbearing age. Generally, people were willing to accept the world as it was presented to them, because there was no way to change the world. Women had the best of it, because they got to stay home and raise the children, when the men went off to war. Apparently, there is scientific evidence that women are better at empathizing and thus better suited for raising children, see article linked below. "For example, there is evidence that males tend to be stronger at systemizing, whereas females tend to be stronger at empathizing."

If that is the case, then discrimination between men and women in activities, careers, etc. would be a logical result of the built-in differences in thinking, as well as physical differences. To be completely honest, it has long been my opinion that women and men were significantly different in how they think, and that those differences have led to the career paths that are typical of either sex. Women are relatively more likely to go into careers where their empathy, nurturing, and associated behaviors would be fitting, such as nursing, teaching, etc. While men are more likely to go into fields that employ the analytical reasoning that men tend to have in greater amounts, such as engineering, mining, metalworking, etc.

It is possible that some people have other ideas of what constitutes sexism. I see references to patriarchal roles and such, and I have always taken that to mean roles that are derived from the actual differences between the sexes applied in ways that were unpleasant to some women. But others may intend them to mean something else. But if that is what is meant by patriarchy, then it is simply a part of nature.

There is a related matter that is seldom touched by anyone in regard to patriarchy. While men have often been the overt reins of government, women were usually in actual, effective control, especially of family and local matters. The men could worry about the neighboring towns, but the women made sure that their town operated the way they wanted it to. Foreign affairs, those are for foreigners; they didn't interest the women until the foreigners were in the immediate area. That changed when representative government was introduced, but the change hasn't been complete, and women are still the minority of representatives in most places. Women had and still have effective control of everything that is important; they just don't necessarily have the titles and pays that sometimes go along with those. Most women seem to understand that they are in charge without having to be instructed in the details, but some women seem to think that the fancy titles are of substance.

To get back to the beginning, I have found works of literature that are about the political opinions of the author are boring, if the ideology is on the surface, but basing something on a given ideology and showing the results in the literature is an excellent technique to show what the ideology truly amounts to.

J. M. Barrie wrote a play about this matter over a hundred years ago, "What Every Woman Knows", and it was reasonably successful, and it was made into a movie in 1934, but I have never seen it.

So, what do you think?


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0149989
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy
What Every Woman Knows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_E...ows_%28play%29
What Every Woman Knows, text
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5654